Watch Aaron in the film Holy Wars

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Another casualty of a white man's hatred

When I first heard that there was a shooting at the Holocaust Memorial Museum today, my first thought was that this despicable crime was carried out by an Islamic extremist. I imagine a lot of others made the same assumption as well. Naturally with so much in the news about Iran's president--perhaps soon to be late president-- Ahmadenijad making public statements denying the holocaust, it's all too easy to cast the anti-semitic stereotype squarely at the feet of Muslims alone, as if being Muslim is somehow equated with being anti-semitic.

As we learned today, what a grave mistake that is! The reality is anti-semitism has historically been a white phenomenon. Think of the Inquisition, the Russian Pogroms--and the Holocaust. This is why it should come as no surprise that the shooter at the Holocaust memorial museum was a white supremacist, not some hot tempered "son of Ishmael" (as the T.V. preachers like to say) destined to create trouble for the Jews because of some longstanding blood feud between the descendants of two historic brothers. Indeed, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has already released a statement saying:

"We condemn this apparent bias-motivated attack and stand with the Jewish community and with Americans of all faiths in repudiating the kind of hatred and intolerance that can lead to such disturbing incidents."

I think that white Americans need to stand up and take notice. Perhaps we need to give some deeper thought as to what we mean when we use the word "terrorist." As we've seen today, a Jew hating terrorist isn't just someone with the first name "Achmed" (think of Jeff Dunham's Achmed the dead terrorist") and an ethnicity labeled "Palestinian." Anti-semitic terrorism comes in all shapes and colors.

My thoughts and prayers go to the family of the security guard that was murdered today. May they feel the comfort of Christ in this dark hour.